Wednesday, February 7, 2007

Ah, the smell of new yarn!

Ok, not really the smell (although I do know knitters who shop for wool by the way it smells!)... but bringing home a bag of new yarn is like bringing home a pair of new shoes. :)

This afternoon I headed to a nearby yarn store, Stitches with Style, to buy some skeins of beige/pink yarn. A friend asked me to make a hat to match a scarf she really likes. It's a very hard to match color --- alone it looks beige with gold thread through it, but against her coat, it looks like pale lavendar or dusty rose. I found a few possibilities. Now I have to put them up against the scarf to double-check. And if they don't match, I'm sure I'll find something else to create using them!!

But, as usual, it was impossible to escape the yarn store without more than just the sample skeins. I found several really good finds hidden in a sale bin under a rack of other yarns. Just hiding out there, waiting for me. I'm not sure yet what I'll do with them.... most of them, in various colors, are wool or part wool. I may just wait until August to start knitting them up. We'll see.

As exciting as today's shopping was, I had some sad news to balance out the euphoria of yarn buying. I often order yarn from a company called Smiley's Yarns, which functions almost exclusively online. They carry a variety of yarns, at ridiculously wonderful prices. Their stock always changes, though, so I buy when I see. But anyway, I'm off topic again. My sad news: I opened my most recent box of purchases from Smiley's, only to discover that one sleeve of yarn (three skeins in a plastic bag) was slit, probably when the larger case of that color was opened, and two of the three balls were slit as well. So instead of pretty ribbon yarn, I have pretty ribbon confetti.

Sadly, their website proclaims NO REFUNDS EVER, but I can't imagine they'd want a repeat customer to be stuck with damaged goods. So I wrote them an email, and am hoping for the best! Cross your fingers; I'll keep you posted.

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